As the parties have grown racially, religiously, and socially distant from one another, a new kind of social discord has been growing. The increasing political divide has allowed political, public, electoral, and national norms to be broken with little to no consequence. Institutions that empower partisan minorities can become instruments of minority rule. And they are especially dangerous when they are in the hands of extremist or antidemocratic partisan minorities. Its political system spreads power out very broadly, in ways that give many individual players the power to stop things.

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Persons: Lilliana Mason, Johns Hopkins, Trump, ”, Steven Levitsky, Daniel Ziblatt, “ Vetocracy, ” Francis Fukuyama, Stanford’s, Fukuyama, ” Fukuyama Organizations: American, Harvard, Constitution, Global, Politics Today, Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, House Republicans Locations: America, U.S